Time to Escape: Welcome to The Travel Tales with Fergal Podcast
We've teamed up with podcast host Fergal O'Keeffe to bring you The Travel Tales with Fergal Podcast. The Podcast aims to share soul-lifting travel memoirs about day-dream worthy destinations where he chats to a special guest every week about their travels, adventures and experiences living abroad. We may not be able to go away this year, but there is nothing like some armchair travel daydreaming to fire the imagination.
Season 2 starts next week and we'll post the podcasts here every THURSDAY evening starting with a Ski Special featuring ten top ski experts and enthusiasts including Irish ski journalist Catharine Murphy, Philip O’Connor in Sweden, Warren Smith in Switzerland, Canadian Randy Lewis, rugby pundit Keith Wood and economist David McWilliams all sharing their favourite resorts for skiing and Sean O’Neill talks about the best resorts for Après Ski.
Fergal O’Keeffe launched The Travel Tales with Fergal Podcast in 2020 to provide some escapism by helping to conjure travel memories and to help fuel planning for future travel. The podcast is the No.1 travel podcast in Ireland and has been listened to in over 30 countries.
Season 2 will include interviews with David McWilliams talking about his time living in Russia just after fall of the Berlin Wall, Paul Wallace on the mystique of Lions rugby tours to South Africa and whether this year’ tour will happen, pro climber Sean Villanueva O'Driscoll on wating out the lockdown in Patagonia, Annie Kennedy on working with the Ferrari F1 team and Canadian chef Randy Lewis share stories of working in kitchens all over the world.
Other guests include adventurer Manchán Magan, comedians Karl Spain and Patrick Monahan and Brendan Dwyer, Irish GM of Spain’s 5 star hotel, La Finca Resort and the award winning Irish author Tim MacGabann on the expat life in Mexico city.
When launching the Podcast’s 2nd Season Fergal said “My guests are people from all walks of life with one thing in common. They all have great travel stories. I really hope these chats inspire people to dream of travel adventures like they have inspired me. As we go further into lockdown, people need some positivity more than ever”.
All episodes of Season 1 are available here where guests talk about travel, culture, food, politics, history, the tourism industry and expat life. Guests from Season 1 include including Keith Wood, Anthony Daly, travel writer Pol O’Conghaile, Mark O’Halloran, Jerry Fish and Dawn Hindle the owner of the legendary Pikes Hotel in Ibiza.
A great episode to give a feel of the podcast is the “Happy Place” episode. This episode is a collection of guests recounting their favourite places from around the world. It is not possible to listen to these memories and not feel a smile creep over your face as they share wonderful stories of places including Cuba, Ibiza, Mexico, Israel, Bali, USA, Spain, Sweden, Alps, Maldives, Italy and a lot of Ireland.
Father-of-four Fergal has a lifelong love of travel and has visited over 30 countries. He brings his natural curiosity and passion for travel when interviewing a wide range of guests from the arts, sport, journalism, travel and business.
Fergal is a publican living in Clonmel, Co Tipperary and he has used the enforced closure of his bar business since March in a positive way by pursuing his love of writing and podcasting about travel.
The Travel Tales with Fergal Podcast is available all podcast platforms and people can follow all his updates on @traveltaleswithfergal on Instragram and @FergalTravel on Twitter. The website is here.
Some helpful tips on how to listen to Travel Tales with Fergal here.